Coram Civic Survey To 'Peel Back Band-aid, Reveal What's Going On'

The Coram Civic Association is conducting a survey of area residents in hopes they can share the results with lawmakers and spur some changes to residents' quality-of-life.

The civic is hoping to engage people from the Longwood community like Coram, Middle Island, Gordon Heights, and Ridge. The due date is Sept. 25, and results will be shared at the Oct. 23 meeting.
The survey can be found at www.coramsurvey.com.

“The premise behind that is we're trying to make Coram a better and safer place to live and raise our families,” said civic association president Kareem Nugdalla. “We want to improve the community. There's a lot of things that have been happening in Coram.”

Nugdalla cited criminal incidents, including the rape of a woman several years ago, and the sexual abuse of two boys in 2022, and the shooting of a police officer in May, as a matter of concern for the civic association.

Because of them, Coram is getting a bad rap.

“Coram is not a bad area to live in; it’s really not” said Nugdalla, a lifelong resident who grew up there. We have beautiful neighborhoods. But, realistically, when you come to our commercial shopping centers, especially along the Middle Country Road corridor, there's a lack of businesses, and the business storefronts themselves look extremely dilapidated.”

In the past, the civic has called for more police in the area.

Nugdalla says it seems like Brookhaven Town, Suffolk County, and state building codes are not being followed, unlike other nearby areas like Miller Place, Rocky Point, and Mount Sinai.

He did note that there has been a renewed effort at the town level with more code enforcement and at the county level with the county legislature, and the police department.

Legis. Dominick Thorne has advocated for more funding for the hamlet, and Commissioner Rodney Harrison has added a sector car to the hotspot at the bus shelter on Route 112 outside of The Home Depot.

The hamlet has a lot of drug abuse and drug sales that's happening in its shopping centers, not to mention panhandling.

“Someone will walk up to you, ask you for money, and they'll take that money and they'll go buy drugs,” he said.

So what happens with that is, [politicians] will say, ‘Well, those sort of things happen in other areas’.”

Nugdalla, a nurse practitioner, likens it to the AIDS crisis, which, while still ongoing in the U.S., is not as prevalent as it is in other countries because there has been preventative work, educational outreach, and more resources.

“The purpose of the survey really is to come together as a community collectively, and kind of like peel back the band-aid a little bit and expose what's really happening,” he said. “So we can be honest about what problems we have in the area and do something about it.”
The civic wants respondents to be brutally honest.=

Many residents do not shop locally because the shopping centers are a turn-off, so they drive out of their way to another community, Nugdalla says.

A portion of the survey concerns support for new legislation, such as requiring security cameras at shopping centers.

“Whenever a crime happens, the cops come and they do their fair share, but there's no evidence to really make anything stick,” he said. “People steal things left and right. People do all types of crazy things – whatever nefarious activity that happens in shopping centers.

“There's really never any evidence to support it,” he said.

There’s also a problem with litter, so Nugdalla says the civic is proposing that soup kitchens feed the hungry inside.

Another question, the civic would like an answer to is whether residents feel proud to live in the community.

So far, the feedback is not good.

“There's not a lot of people saying that they're proud and that's just sends a clear message that there really needs to be something done here and now,” Nugdalla said.

It’s not the first time that the civic has undertaken a survey. Last year, results proved to focus on complaints, but this year, the civic is aiming for more specific feedback to help bring about some changes.

“We want to be viewed as a decent place to live and raise your family, with decent people here in the community,” he said.